The book I’m discussing today, “I Walked on the Edge of Breakdown: Yu Minhong’s Personal Account of New Oriental’s Entrepreneurial Development,” is an autobiographical work by Mr. Yu Minhong, recounting his many experiences and psychological journey since founding New Oriental. Today, I’ll summarize the content of this book and share my personal reflections.

The book begins before Yu Minhong founded New Oriental. Yu Minhong was originally a teacher at Peking University, and he left the university after conflicts with the school. At the time, there was a trend of studying abroad, and Yu Minhong initially planned to train others for the GRE exam to save money for studying abroad. But through a series of coincidences, New Oriental grew larger and larger.

In simple terms, New Oriental’s development went through the following stages:

  1. The small workshop stage where Yu Minhong handled almost everything himself
  2. Obtaining a school operating license and gradually moving toward formalization;
  3. The brand began to spread explosively
  4. Old classmates like Xu Xiaoping and Wang Qiang joined, and Yu Minhong began to have many strong partners
  5. Family members departed, Western management knowledge was adopted, and New Oriental began to establish clear systems
  6. The company was established, along with continuous reforms to the organizational structure
  7. External investment came in, leading to the IPO
  8. Old shareholders exited, the new generation rose; new business areas continued to develop, up to the New Oriental of today

Through this book, we see New Oriental’s journey from a small training center to a leading domestic educational institution, and there are many insights to be gained.

About Growth

Reading the biographies of all successful people, you’ll find they share a common trait: they don’t limit themselves, they don’t say “I can only do these things, I can’t do those things.” Yu Minhong is no exception. New Oriental originated from the fact that Yu Minhong’s English was indeed very good, and he caught the wave of studying abroad. But looking back today, we can see that Yu Minhong’s English ability was only a small part of New Oriental’s entire development process.

From the moment Yu Minhong started his training classes, he had to prepare lessons for various subjects and think about how to market. As the company grew, he had to continuously learn about company management, acquire financial knowledge, and constantly solve various new problems.

Yu Minhong also often says in the book that in the beginning he didn’t understand company management or finance, and usually only thought about how to solve problems after they arose. Solving these problems required continuous growth of one’s own capabilities — either through self-learning or bringing in external expertise — all of which require constantly expanding one’s circle of competence.

In the course of career development, there will inevitably be many unfamiliar areas at the boundaries of our work. If we maintain an open attitude toward these areas, we can naturally expand our capabilities. When our capabilities expand, we’ll have more opportunities, and within those opportunities, we can encounter new areas. This creates a positive cycle that promotes both career development and the expansion of our circle of competence.

Of course, in the process of growth, luck is indispensable. The experiences of the successful people we see all carry survivorship bias. New Oriental’s development process does have several instances that can be attributed to good luck. But we can imagine: if we removed those lucky factors, Yu Minhong’s development path might have been saving money to go abroad, then most likely finding a good job; or he might have continued the training business. Even without favorable policies, as long as he kept expanding his circle of competence, I think it would have been enough for him to live quite well.

In short, great success depends on fate, but if we can always maintain our own growth, ensuring a comfortable middle-class life is still achievable.

About Education

New Oriental is, after all, an education company. I happen to work at an online education company, so I paid particular attention to the discussion of the education business. After finishing this book, the biggest insight about education is that regardless of which users you target, which subject you teach, or what format you use, the foundation of everything can only be the quality of teaching itself. Only teaching itself can sustain an institution over the long term. Perhaps you can attract a large number of students in the short term through massive marketing, or use sales tactics to convince users to enroll in more expensive courses — there are many ways to achieve high returns in the short term. But no one is foolish, and users will soon vote with their feet.

About Rules

For an organization, reasonable rules are essential. Regarding rules, the two most important points are: first, they must exist, and second, they must be reasonable.

New Oriental’s transformation from a family business to a formal enterprise was a process of rules going from nothing to something. Subsequently, whether it was the establishment of the board of directors, the development of branch schools, or determining the assessment mechanisms for branches, it was a process of rules continuously developing. When rules are well-designed, the company can continue to grow and develop, achieving a win-win situation for the enterprise and employees. When rules are poorly designed, the company will inevitably head toward breakdown. The key to good rules is enabling employees’ personal interests to be transformed into company interests. People are highly adaptable — if you evaluate branches based on their revenue, then branches will find all sorts of ways to increase revenue, but in the process, they’ll drain the company’s reputation. Under good rules, employees are still pursuing their own interests, but in doing so, they naturally contribute to the company’s development.

In addition, there are many other scattered insights, such as various business models in New Oriental’s development process — like the large class model, like early marketing methods; and the importance of standardization for a company to grow big. In short, although this book is just an autobiography, it’s packed with valuable insights and worth reading several times carefully.

Source: https://lichuanyang.top/en/posts/6471/